In December, the Federal Trade Commission and a coalition of states filed antitrust lawsuits against Facebook, alleging that as the company grew more dominant and faced less competition, it reneged on its promises to protect user privacy.

According to TurgenSec’s responsible notice (found here), the data breached ranged from standard PII (name, email, phone) to the entries submitted to the startup competitions, judging criteria, results and even tax information of entrants.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against Google in December, claiming the company was too large and the competition was fierce.Nevada was the first state to be signed by a Democratic Attorney General.

He was a special adviser to the Federal Trade Commission in 2011 and 2012 and then joined the National Economic Council to work on competition policy during the Obama administration, which was known for its kid-glove treatment of tech companies like Facebook, Google and Amazon.

The final version of the suit made public last week (PDF) alleged that Google and Facebook signed a secret agreement in 2018 that "fixes prices and allocates markets between Google and Facebook as competing bidders in the auctions for publishers' Web display and in-app advertising inventory.".

WASHINGTON — The Federal Trade Commission and more than 40 states accused Facebook on Wednesday of buying up its rivals to illegally squash competition, and they called for the deals to be unwound, escalating regulators’ battle against the biggest tech companies in a way that could remake the social media industry.

The tech giant Apple has been fined 10 million Euros ($12 million) by the Italian Competition Authority over what it says were “aggressive and misleading” advertising practices for its iPhones.

The group, made up of online businesses “who share a concern that Google is threatening the open web model that is vital to the functioning of a free and competitive media and online economy”, has asked the UK Competition and Markets Authority to delay the introduction of Privacy Sandbox until the law is changed to ensure a level playing field.

The U.K. competition regulator is considering a formal investigation into Google’s new digital advertising tool, following a complaint from a group of online businesses that called on intervention to block the launch of the technology.

According to AP, UK’s antitrust watchdog, Competition and Markets Authority, initiated its investigation after receiving a complaint from an organization called ‘Marketers for an Open Web’, which is said to be a coalition of technology and publishing companies.

An equivalent technical interoperability requirement for the largest social media and messaging platforms would enable interconnection between very large services (such as Facebook/WhatsApp/Instagram) and services run by other organisations and even individuals that wish to.

Starting in early 2021, Apple's operating software will require apps to get opt-in permission from users to collect their advertising identifier, a key number used to deliver targeted ads and check how ad campaigns performed.

Today, the Department of Justice — along with eleven state Attorneys General — filed a civil antitrust lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to stop Google from unlawfully maintaining monopolies through anticompetitive and exclusionary practices in the search and search advertising markets and to remedy the competitive harms.

The Italian competition body said it is looking into allegations that the companies failed to show how their services collect and use consumer data for commercial purposes.

To gather information, the European Commission has demanded internal documents from Facebook that include 2,500 specific key phrases.Facebook says that means handing over unrelated but highly sensitive data.The European Commission says it will defend the case in court, and its investigation into Facebook's potential anticompetitive conduct is ongoing.

In Australian Federal Court, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) accused Google of not explicitly getting consent or properly informing consumers of a 2016 move to combine personal information in Google accounts with browsing activities on non-Google websites.

A spokesperson for the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of B.C. said in an email, “Our office is aware of the persistent location tracking in the Tim Hortons app as reported by media, and will be looking into the issue in more detail.

A free Internet guarantees that all online services are being treated equally: Right now we can access any website at the same speed.Without net neutrality ISPs could, for instance, offer a 'US bundle', which allows users to use certain US services like Google, Facebook and Twitter without any data limit.

The regulator announced the preliminary results of another investigation, saying that Google has abused its dominant position in search and advertising to push its services at the expense of local competition.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - EU antitrust regulators are investigating Google’s collection of data, the European Commission told Reuters on Saturday, suggesting the world’s most popular internet search engine remains in its sights despite record fines in recent years.

Organizers plan to submit a report of all bugs uncovered during the event to all vendors when the competition concludes, says ZDNet. This is literally just, like, a hundred Chinese security researchers testing their 0days in competition against modern software targets.

Russia might make this law effective in the country by July 2020.To explain the motive of drafting and applying such law in Russia, the lawmakers and members of legislation have explained that the idea is to promote the widespread use of Russian software and endorse the technology.

On September 19, a coalition of ISPs sent a letter to Congress voicing concerns that the protocol would centralize Google as the primary DNS lookup provider, virtually shutting out competition.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The House of Representatives Judiciary Committee expects to have a final report on its probe of big technology companies and their potential breaches of antitrust law, by the “first part” of next year, the chair of its antitrust panel said on Friday.

Snap's talks with the Federal Trade Commission are part of a larger probe into Facebook's business tactics, in which the FTC has made contact with dozens of tech executives and app developers.Facebook's stock slipped 0.1% in premarket trading while Snap shares fell 0.7%.

Facebook has taken aim at Australia's competition watchdog for recommending "dangerous" privacy changes and wrongly conflating the social media giant with search engine Google as part of its world-first inquiry into the tech companies.

Gen. Letitia James is leading a bipartisan coalition of states looking into whether Facebook “stifled competition and put users at risk” by increasing the price of advertising, reducing consumer-choice quality and mishandling personal information, according to a statement Friday.

"I’m launching an investigation into Facebook to determine whether their actions endangered consumer data, reduced the quality of consumers’ choices, or increased the price of advertising," New York attorney general Letitia James said this morning.

(Bloomberg) -- Antitrust officials are right to look back at Facebook Inc.’s acquisition of Instagram to determine whether the deal harmed competition, Colorado’s attorney general said, adding to calls for renewed scrutiny of the takeover of the photo-sharing site.

The proposed law basically seeks to deter anticompetitive and monopolistic behavior by charging great gobs of money against the companies that get caught doing it.And in that same week, Facebook said it was the target of an FTC antitrust investigation, separate from the FTC's probes into its privacy practices.